It's been a difficult last month, with job woes and traveling a plenty, but when one door closes, another one opens. However, whilst my physical modelling has taken a bit of a hit, with no work done on the fleet of locomotives and rolling stock since early September, I have begun planning my new layout, Ganwick Curve, which I intend to build over a two year period.

However, I intend this week to finish a few specific projects and also push a few along towards their completion. It was planning out my next bout of modelling that one fortuitous moment of clarity a few nights ago confirmed that I was making more work for myself than was necessary.

I had taken delivery of some resin parts from Graeme King - excellent representations of the washout plugs from an A4 (which are appropriate for various boiler types and Pacific locomotives). These were intended for the Nu Cast P2 I am building, which was to become a more accurate version of no.2006 Wolf of Badenoch, which had a different boiler to those on the other P2s and therefore had different washout plugs.

In parallel, I am working on my A2/2, no.60503 Lord President, intending to portray this locomotive with its specific washout plug arrangement.

It dawned on me - and I must confess, I should have seen it earlier - that by leaving the washout plug arrangement on the P2, and changing its intended identity to no.2003 Lord President, and switching the use of the washout plugs to the A2/2, I could then model no.60506 easier than 60503, and no.2003 easier than no.2006. Sounds simple, no?

I had forgot at this point that whereas 60503 had been seen at Copley Hill in 1949, 60506 had not. So my choice of A2/2 identity would be inappropriate for a future Copley Hill layout, and certainly inappropriate on Leeds-King's Cross expresses on the future Ganwick Curve.

That was until I found a photograph of 60506 at Copley Hill in 1949 yesterday - filling in for failed Pacific Centenary! It turns out I can model 60506 after all without the annoyance of modeling the "wrong" class member, so to speak. One other thing to sort will be the chimney. On my current model the stovepipe chimney has the later applied lip. 60506's stovepipe didn't have the lip in 1949, so this will be removed through sanding it away.

So thankfully the plan for an identity switch meets with a happy conclusion. These two locomotives will be worked on, along with the lone Thompson D Class, The Morpeth, which requires final application of its transfers and some weathering. That will allow my workbench some breathing space to finish work on a few other locomotive projects I've been working on.

Until next time - my camera's been repaired so pictures will be forthcoming too!